Polk County, Wisconsin v. J. K. J., et al.

Under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), a municipality may be held liable under 42 U.S.C. §1983 only for its own unconstitutional acts. “In limited circumstances,” such as when a municipality is on notice of a pattern or practice of unconstitutional acts, it may be held liable on the theory that the “decision not to train certain employees about their legal duty to avoid violating citizens’ rights” is tantamount to an official policy of condoning constitutional violations. Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 61 (2011). This Court has also left open the possibility that in rare cases a municipality could be held liable for a failure to train even absent any such pattern or practice, but it has never sustained a so-called “single-incident” claim. In the divided decision below, the en banc Seventh Circuit concluded that a county could be held liable for a correctional officer’s repeated and covert sexual assault of two inmates. The majority agreed that the county expressly prohibited sexual contact between officers and inmates, that there was no pattern or practice of violations of that policy, and that the officer had been trained and understood that his conduct violated county policy and criminal law. Nonetheless, it concluded that the county could be held liable on the theory that the risk that an officer would violate its clear prohibition on sexual assault was so “obvious” that its failure to do more to address it constituted a de facto policy of condoning sexual assault. The question presented is: Whether the “single-incident” theory of Monell liability may be used to hold a municipality liable